MANILA, Philippines—Unlike in the 1990s when it took a back seat, public relations today is getting a bigger slice of advertising and marketing budgets.
This is because ad media costs have sharply increased, the size of media audiences have shrunk, and there is too much advertising clutter, especially on television.
A 30-second TV spot now costs over P400,000 on prime time, excluding the higher cost of creatives and commercial production. Yet, TV commercials reach only a low viewership of 10 percent on the average, as audiences are sprinting between video games, Facebook, YouTube and text messaging.
On the other hand, a four-color full page newspaper ad now costs over P350,000, not including VAT and the cost of creating and producing the ad.
Then there is the problem of too much advertising clutter, which has reduced the impact of each ad.
Certainly, a skillfully written PR feature article can communicate more product information than an abbreviated 30-second TV commercial.
Thus public relations is now recognized as a legitimate component of the marketing mix. For this reason, managing the news and creating an ambient mood around a product or a company has become an essential marketing strategy.
The goal of marketing PR is not to build a mass of news clippings but to win a market share.
Integrating PR with advertising can support a specific marketing objective.
What then must a client do to get the most from his PR agency? Here are a few rules that I would adopt in dealing with my agency.
1) Let your agency make a profit.
If you haggle with your agency over retainer, editorial and events management fees, you are making a big mistake. Agencies have costs, too, and salaries of creative people are not cheap.
As client, I would volunteer to pay extra for the best professional writers and strategic communicators, and allow the agency to experiment in search of more creative ways of story-telling.
2) Do not scare your agency with innuendos.
Many clients have the habit of scaring the agency with intimations that they are always looking for a new agency. This is counterproductive. Agency executives who are terrorized are not in the best position to produce great PR programs.
Clarence Eldridge, former VP of General Foods, was a perfect connoisseur of client-agency relationship. He believed that the ideal client-agency relationship should have “permanence,” and in order to achieve permanence, it must be in the minds of both client and agency from the very beginning.
3) Do not compete with the agency in creative communications.
Some company PR managers are insecure backseat drivers. They want to do the writing of news releases and feature articles themselves to impress the bosses that they are as good, if not better, than the agency. They order the agency to dispatch their news releases “as is,” not aware that there are style-book procedures and limitations. When the editors don’t pick up their brainchild, they make the agency a convenient scapegoat.
I would make it clear to my PR agency that they are responsible for creative communications, crisis and issues management and media training, and I would put my full trust in their professional competence.
4) Do not find fault with the agency; instead, find a remedy.
Many clients shower the agency with scathing insults if there are few media attendees during a product launching, but never pat the agency on the back when deliverables are exceeded. If you find that the agency has not performed well, you should of course speak your mind, but in a diplomatic way.
5) Brief the PR agency exhaustively.
The more you acquaint your agency with your company and products, policies and procedures, the better job it will do for you.
6) Leave the agency alone to come up with a strategy for you.
PR agencies have well-experienced strategic communicators. Over the years, they have handled various crisis PR situations and have established strong working relationships with the media. Let them do their thing.
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